Hallowed Be Your Name

Welcome

Well, good morning friends! Good to be with you again. If we haven’t met before, my name is Dan and I serve here as one of the pastors alongside Jason Philips. We’re really glad you’re here with us today.

Introduction

If you have a bible with you - meet me in the New Testament book of Matthew. Matthew, chapter 6.

We’re continuing in our series through one of the most well-known passages in all of the bible - a prayer Jesus taught his followers. Depending on your faith background, you know this as the “Lord’s Prayer” or the “Our Father.”

And if you missed last week, let me catch you up on how we’re navigating this series.

PAUSE

Back home, at the Adler Planetarium up in Chicago, there is this incredible exhibit about the Apollo and Gemini space missions. They have actual landing craft—like the Gemini 12 capsule that carried Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin into space in 1966. They have the space suits and the personal gear from Captain Jim Lovell.

And there’s this odd thing that happens when you’re looking at this stuff. You stand there, looking at all of it behind this thick pane of protective glass, and there’s a moment when you realize you aren’t just looking at a prop.

You’re looking at actual flight plans, the fabric, the joints, the machinery that actually went into the most hostile, unforgiving environment known to man. It was the only thing that kept a human being alive.

To me, standing in a climate-controlled room, in flip flops, sipping on an overpriced cup of coffee, it’s a fascinating historical artifact.

But that’s not what it was meant to be, right?

To Jim Lovell, this stuff was survival gear. You don’t make it there and back again without this stuff.

And in a lot of ways, I think it’s really easy to do something very similar with the Lord’s Prayer.

We treat it like a religious artifact locked in a glass case. We take it out, recite the beautiful, familiar words, and then put it right back.

And so no wonder many of us who have grown up knowing the Lord’s Prayer can end up feeling like there’s a massive disconnect.

But what if that disconnect isn't because the prayer is outdated? What if it feels disconnected because we forgot what it was designed for? You don't need survival gear if you are just standing in a museum.

And the truth is, Jesus never intended for our faith to be a museum. He didn't invite us to just adopt a label and sit still. He invited people out onto the road.

If you read the New Testament, you’ll notice the writers employ some vivid imagery to describe followers of Jesus.

First of all - they are called “followers”...and intrinsic to following someone is the idea that you are moving.

More than that, they call them exiles, strangers, and sojourners. They are describing people on the move...people who are passing through.

But that biblical reality can feel like a massive disconnect for us today. Because in our current cultural moment, Christianity is often experienced as something static. It’s a category. A demographic. A permanent residence we settle into. And if we are honest, we often want it to be a permanent residence because we are just tired. Life is heavy, and we want a safe, predictable place to catch our breath. We don't naturally want to be on a demanding road.

And I’ve spent the better part of the last year and a half trying to find the right language to capture this idea, because to say that Christianity is more like a "journey" just seems a little too intangible. But in the process of working through this series, the image that kept coming to mind to shatter that static default was what we would call a pilgrim.

And remember what makes a pilgrim different. A pilgrim isn't a wanderer moving aimlessly, and they certainly aren't a tourist expecting a safe, comfortable vacation. A pilgrim is someone who knows they are not home yet. They are actively walking a demanding, exhausting, and sometimes treacherous trail. They actually expect the elements to be harsh.

And if you are on that kind of pilgrimage—if you are navigating the harsh elements of raising kids, walking through grief, or just trying to survive a heavy season at your job—you do not need a museum exhibit. You need survival gear.

So throughout this series, we are breaking the glass. We are taking this prayer out and looking at each line as two things: a signpost to reorient us when we get disoriented, and a practical tool to bear our weight on the journey.

Today, we are looking at the second line of the prayer. And it provides both a crucial signpost to point our eyes in the right direction, and the exact tool we need when the trail feels entirely overwhelming.

Let me read the whole thing, and we’ll get started.

Matthew 6:9–13 ESV

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

PAUSE

Hallowed Be Your Name

Alright, let’s go ahead and get started.

Like I said, we’re focusing in on the second line of this prayer, “Hallowed be your name.” And we’ll be looking at how this is both a signpost and a tool for the pilgrimage.

But first, what does this phrase mean, “Hallowed be your name...”?

There are a few challenges here.

First, the language here is a bit archaic. There’s a lot that goes into this, but generally speaking, when translators work on the Bible, their goal is to use clear, modern language. But when they get to a passage that is deeply embedded in the cultural memory—like the Lord's Prayer or Psalm 23—they often leave the traditional wording intact. If they updated it too much, it would just sound jarring to our ears.

So they leave words like “Hallowed,” which is essentially Old English. If we were to modernize this a bit, we might say something like “May your Name be made Holy” or “May your name be honored.”

But that only leads to other questions!

What does it mean to make God’s name holy? Wouldn’t it already be holy?

And why just His name?

The Third Commandment

Well, it’s helpful to keep in mind that as Jesus is teaching this prayer, he is sitting before a Jewish audience who would have been much more familiar with the subtext of what He’s saying—they would be making connections all along the way.

And as Jesus says, “Hallowed be your Name,” their minds would have immediately gone to what we call the Ten Commandments.

Which probably sounds like a bit of a leap at first, but hear me out.

The third commandment says this:

Exodus 20:7 ESV

“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Now, there are at least two things that jump out to me here. First is the obvious connection that both this line of the Lord’s Prayer and the Third Commandment are concerned with God’s name.

In our modern world, a name is mostly just a tag to get someone's attention. But in the ancient world, a name was entirely different. A name was the total sum of someone's character, their authority, and their reputation. It was their track record.

But for some reason, if we ever think about the Third Commandment at all, we tend to think it means something like, “Don’t swear using God’s name.”

Which could definitely be an implication, but if that’s ALL it means, it’s an oddly specific thing for God to command, right?

But I’ve been really intrigued by that word “vain” in Exodus 20.

Exodus 20:7 ESV

“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain...

PAUSE

In the original language, it’s a word that means “empty... weightless... or interestingly enough, hollow.”

Now, here’s the thing. It actually has very little to do with the words that come out of your mouth when someone cuts you off or you stub your toe.

You make something vain when you take something meaningful...something gravitas or significance and you treat it as if it’s flippant...trivial...or hollow.

And so to take the Lord’s name in vain is actually describing something that happens in our hearts and minds when we envision God.

PAUSE

And I actually think this makes a lot of sense if we plug it back into the pilgrimage metaphor we’ve been using in this series.

Remember, part of what it means to be on a pilgrimage is that we are not on a safe, comfortable journey. And while there may be moments of immense joy, gratitude, and contentment, life as we know has it’s share of deep valleys.

There are a long stretches where the trail gets brutal.

There are stretches marked by the sudden terror of a diagnosis, the slow, exhausting grind of a fractured marriage, having the same fight about the same thing over and over again, the fear of barely making it from pay-check to pay-check or the quiet, heavy reality of loneliness that just won't lift.

And listen, I don’t say any of this to minimize what you’re walking through right now—and it’s certainly not make you feel guilty for the very real and deeply human questions you’ve probably asked along the way.

Because, the fact of the matter is that it’s precisely in those moments when our view of God is profoundly challenged!

When we don’t have a nice, bow-tie of an answer that we can throw on top of this leg of the journey. When there are months, and perhaps years, of unanswered prayer.

You see, something happens to our view of God.

And it’s probably not a formal list accusations against Him.

It’s more likely a string of agonizing questions—questions like: -Why He’s letting this happen to you. -Why He took that person from you. -Why He’s let you toil with a spouse who makes no discernible effort to care for you. -How long He’s just going to let you go on like this!

PAUSE

You see, in these moments, something has happened to our vision of God. Something has happened to what we believe about Him, what we know about Him, and how we’ve seen Him.

In these kinds of moments—which are absolutely guaranteed to be part of the journey—in your mind, and in my mind, He’s become small. He’s become light.

He’s become hollow.

Have you been there? Are you there right now?

PAUSE

You see, I think Jesus knows we’d end up here.

He knows the sheer exhaustion of the trail and how that exhaustion will try to empty our view of God. And that is exactly why He gives us this specific line of survival gear.

Isn’t it interesting - that while the third commandment essentially gives us a warning about making God small...a warning about how almost every impulse we have in the valley will question who He is and What he’s like...in this prayer, He tells us to the exact opposite. Look at his prayer again.

Matthew 6:9 ESV

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

In the original language, the word for hallowed or holy—doesn't just mean morally perfect. It means to be completely set apart. It means distinct. It means wholly other.

But here is where this gets incredibly beautiful, and where it directly answers that terrifying feeling of God becoming 'hollow' or weightless in our lives.

See, throughout the biblical storyline, there is a profound, unbreakable relationship between God's ideas about God’s nature - His holiness... and God's glory.

We see this connection most clearly in Isaiah 6.

Isaiah 6:3 ESV

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”

Do you see the connection?

When God's distinct, set-apart holiness goes public, it is experienced as a heavy, undeniable weight.

When you and I are in the valley, and every instinct we have leads us treat God as vain or hollow, we are treating Him like He is just another ordinary, failing variable in your life. We are treating Him as common...hollow.

PAUSE — SLOW DOWN

But the moment we stop, catch our breath, and pray, 'Hallowed be your name,' we are doing something profoundly subversive.

You are actively acknowledging that He is completely set apart from the mess you are standing in. You are declaring His distinct holiness.

PAUSE — SLOW DOWN

You are inviting what is Holy...weighty...deep and hallowed to fill and displace what had become hollow.

Jesus isn't just giving us a polite, archaic greeting to start a prayer. He is giving us a deliberate counter-measure for when we are lost in the ordinary, brutal grind of the trail.

This one phrase acts as both a signpost to reorient us, and a practical tool to help us survive.

Signpost

Here is how "Hallowed be your name" functions as a signpost.

If you are a parent, you have probably had that moment on a hike where you realize you have made a huge mistake.

A while back, we were out on a trail, and David—our youngest—hit that specific wall where he simultaneously hated walking, and he hated being carried. You know the exact feeling. You are miles from the car, looking at your child, thinking, "Why did I bring you into the wilderness?"

So, you end up having to carry him back. And at first, it’s manageable.

But...you can only switch arms so many times.

You have the weight of your pack, plus the weight of a frustrated kid, and the physical exhaustion just starts to take over!

And somewhere along the way...something happens to your posture.

Your eyes shift off the horizon. You stop looking at the scenery or the trail ahead. Your head just drops And you get locked in on the dirt right in front of your boots.

You are just trying to get one foot out in front of the other.

When you get locked into that posture, you lose all sense of how much ground you are covering. But worse than that, you lose your sense of just about everything else. Your entire world shrinks down to the crushing weight in your arms and the dirt on your boots. And in a strange way, it pulls your focus away from the very reason you’re on the trail int the first place - and that part of the struggle becomes the strongest, most real thing around you!

It’s a kind of tunnel vision.

And friends, this is exactly what happens to us spiritually in the valleys of our pilgrimage.

I can tell you exactly what this tunnel vision looks like in my own life right now. I have shared this in the past, but over the years, I have become increasingly aware of how fear shapes me. It often happens without me even realizing it.

One of the main ways this surfaces is through the church finances. I can easily convince myself that I am just exercising responsible, administrative oversight. But if I am honest, that is not what is happening. There is a deep, painful dread about my own future wrapped up in those numbers. When giving dips, my mind does not stay on the budget. It immediately jumps to my security, my family, and my livelihood.

It becomes entirely consuming. I dream about it. I bring the anxiety home and talk with Courtney about it constantly. The sheer gravity of that fear changes my posture. My world shrinks. I stop seeing the church, I stop seeing the horizon, and I narrow in completely on a bottom line. The only thing I can look at is the dirt right in front of me. My fear of tomorrow becomes my entire world.

Do you know what is actually happening in my heart when I do that? I am looking at the Creator of the universe—the Guide who has a flawless track record of providing for His people—and I am treating Him as light, small, and hollow. I am taking the weight away from God, and I am adding it to my fears. I am taking all of that gravity and significance, and I am handing it over to my anxiety.

In a strange twist, I am giving my anxiety glory. I am making it the heaviest, most undeniable reality in my life. But here is the tragic irony of the trail: When God holds the weight, His glory acts as an anchor that stabilizes your life. But when you take that weight and attach it to your fears, it does not bring stability. It crushes you.

If you are here today and you are not a follower of Jesus, I want to be incredibly clear with you. This is exactly what life is when you are your own guide. You are carrying the full weight of your life, your future, your anxieties, and your mistakes entirely on your own shoulders. And it is exhausting. It is crushing you because you were never created to carry that kind of weight by yourself.

But this is the core of the Christian gospel: Jesus Christ did not just stand safely at the end of the trail shouting instructions. He walked straight into the wilderness with us. He went to the cross to take the heaviest, most crushing weight imaginable—the weight of our sin, our shame, and our absolute failure to run our own lives. He let that weight crush Him so that it would not have to crush you.

He offers to take your pack. But to hand it over, you have to stop. You have to stop moving, stop trying to manage the crisis on your own, and surrender to the Guide who already carried the ultimate weight. When you do that, God is no longer a distant deity; He becomes your Father.

And for those of us who have already trusted Him, we still forget. I forget. I take the weight of my future back onto my own shoulders, and my world shrinks back down to the dirt on my boots.

And yet, that is exactly what a signpost is for.

A signpost does not carry your backpack. It doesn't make the trail instantly flat, and it doesn't magically transport you to the parking lot. A signpost does one very specific thing: it forces you to lift your head.

When you are staring at the dirt, overwhelmed by the crushing weight of your life, and you choose to pray, "Hallowed be your name," you are deliberately breaking that tunnel vision. You are looking at the fear in front of you and saying, "No. You do not get the glory. You do not get to be the heaviest thing in my life."

You are lifting your eyes from the mud and forcing your mind to lock back onto the set-apart, weighty, undeniable character of God. It reorients you. It reminds you that while your circumstances are incredibly heavy, your God is distinct. God is set apart. God is heavier than this.

When you hallow His name, you are not denying the reality of the valley. You are simply refusing to let the valley define the size of your God.

Tool

While a signpost is crucial for breaking our tunnel vision, "Hallowed be your name" also functions as a tool—much like a set of binoculars.

When you are carrying a crushing weight, God can feel incredibly distant. The problem right in front of you is loud and massive, while His presence seems miles away. Binoculars change your depth of field. They take what feels distant and pull it right up to your eyes.

But we have to be clear about what we are actually doing here. Jesus did not give his disciples a mental exercise; he gave them a declaration. To "hallow" God's name means to set it apart. It means to deliberately treat Him as the ultimate, heaviest reality in your life.

When you are exhausted, your problems feel ultimate. Your fears about the future or your stress about finances feel like the biggest things in the room. Praying "Hallowed be your name" is the active rejection of that lie. You are lifting the binoculars to your eyes and bringing God's actual track record back into focus.

But here is the reality of using binoculars: you cannot look through them while you are moving. If you try to keep hiking down the trail with lenses pressed to your eyes, the image shakes, it makes you dizzy, and you will absolutely trip. To actually see what is on the horizon, you have to stop. You have to plant your feet, stand still, and hold the lenses steady.

Anxiety always speaks in a rushed, urgent panic. It wants you to keep moving, keep reacting, and keep managing the crisis. But looking through these binoculars forces a full stop.

You have to pause. You are choosing to halt your hurried steps to look at the specific, historic details of His provision. You are not just thinking about a generic, distant deity; you are bringing to mind the actual moments He has carried you in the past. You are remembering His faithfulness—tracing the lines of how He has provided when the math did not make sense, and how He has remained steady when everything else was shaking.

You are bringing those past realities right into your present moment. You are looking directly at the loud, demanding fears in your life, and you are actively saying, "God, my anxiety is screaming at me to keep moving, but Your name is set apart. Your track record is flawless. You are heavier, You are more real, and You are more permanent than this temporary crisis."

And friends, this is why this phrase, “hallowed be your name...” is not just some abstract theological concept; it is a very practical tool for a Tuesday afternoon.

Last week, I challenged us to take this prayer and commit to praying it three times a day (morning, noon, and evening).

This is why praying this multiple times a day is so vital. It cannot just be a box you check in the morning. When the anxiety about the future flares up at 10:00 AM, you don't just take a deep breath—you stop walking. You lift the binoculars. You declare, "Hallowed be your name. You are bigger than this fear." When you feel crushed by the weight of a difficult conversation at 2:00 PM, you stop walking and lift them again.

What’s happening in that practice - is that yo are building a rhythm...a habit. You are refusing to let the heavy things of this world define your reality, and you are deliberately fixing your attention on the only One who is strong enough to carry the weight.

Conclusion

As we close today, I want to leave you with a challenge. For this entire series, we are ending each week by looking at an ancient practice from church history to help us actually use this prayer as a signpost and a tool.

Last week, we looked at the Didache and the early church practice of praying the Lord's Prayer three times a day. This week, I want to look at an insight from a 16th-century leader named St. Ignatius.

Ignatius had a very specific rule for how to begin prayer. He wrote that before you even start to pray, you should stop a step or two away from where you are going to sit or kneel. You don't just rush into the words. You take a physical and mental pause.

In that space of one or two steps, you stand still and deliberately remind yourself who you are about to talk to. You consider how God is looking at you. You adjust your focus before you ever open your mouth.

This is the exact same thing as using those binoculars. You cannot just throw them up to your eyes while you are sprinting down the trail and expect to see the horizon. You have to stop walking. You have to plant your feet and let the lenses come into focus.

So here is my challenge for you this week. I want you to keep those three daily reminders on your phone: morning, lunch break, and evening.

But when that alarm goes off, do not just dive straight into the words to get them over with. I want you to take one or two steps.

Stop walking. Pause the urgency of your day. Let the noise of your anxiety, your finances, or your schedule fade for just a few seconds. Remind yourself who you are addressing. Lift the binoculars to your eyes, adjust the focus, and then—and only then—step into the prayer.

"Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name."

Because when you take the time to actually look at who you are talking to, the heavy things in your life stop feeling so ultimate. When we pause and hallow His name, we are actively looking at our deepest fears and declaring that they do not get the glory. They do not get to be the heaviest thing in our lives.

God is distinct. God is set apart. God is heavier than this.

Let's pray.